Co-Founder of Japanese Lacrosse Dies at 78

Norio Endo, a retired U.S. Navy captain who helped establish
lacrosse in Japan, died Jan. 11 in Baltimore after a bout with
cancer. He was 78.

According to an obituary published Tuesday in The Washington
Post, Capt. Endo was among thousands of Japanese Americans
interned during World War II. He later attended Johns Hopkins
University and enlisted in the Navy in 1956, serving two tours in
the Vietnam War.

Capt. Endo spent most of his post-military career working for
the aerospace company Grumman, including a stint in its Tokyo
office. While abroad, he encountered Ross Jones, then the vice
president of Johns Hopkins University. According to The Post, both
men thought lacrosse should be introduced to Japan because it
shared elements of the traditional Japanese martial art kendo and
that the game would fit well in Japanese culture.

Capt. Endo and Ross established the Japanese Lacrosse
Association in 1987. Japan now boasts the third-highest
lacrosse-playing population in the world, behind the U.S. and
Canada.

Many U.S. college teams and coaches have toured Japan, whose
lacrosse base has grown to about 80,000 players thanks to
development efforts spearheaded by those programs and the
Federation of International Lacrosse (FIL). The 2010 Japanese
men’s national team finished fourth at the FIL World
Championship, the country’s highest-ever finish in
international competition.